1. Statement of the Technical Field
The inventive arrangements concerns tools for configuring and aligning radio equipment, and more particularly tools used to configure Ethernet radio equipment.
2. Description of the Related Art
Military, homeland security and public safety personnel have a growing need for easily deployable lightweight high-speed broadband computer network radio equipment. Such equipment is useful for implementing wireless wide-area communications networks in point-to-point and point-to-multipoint configurations. Various IP based communication protocols, such as Ethernet, can be used for this purpose. For example, such network radio equipment can provide access to voice, messaging, imagery, video and other bandwidth-intensive information. Currently available equipment for this purpose can be used to transfer Internet Protocol (IP) traffic over many kilometers at data rates in excess of 70 Mbps. One example of such deployable high-speed Broadband Ethernet Radio is the model RF-7800W-OU440 which is commercially available from Harris Corporation of Melbourne, Fla. These easily deployable Broadband Ethernet Radio systems represent a less expensive alternative for IP based communications as compared to traditional microwave radio solutions.
Setting up a communications link using network radio equipment of the type described herein generally involves two steps: (1) entering certain network configuration settings, and (2) alignment of the antenna so that it is properly positioned for optimal radio communications. The configuration settings can include, without limitation, selecting a name for the radio system, selecting an access point IP address, entering an IP subnet mask to identify the sub-network, selecting a radio service set identifier and so on. Such configurations may include conventional network settings, as well as proprietary settings associated with a particular network radio. Configuring the network radio equipment as described herein typically requires at least a laptop computer to select the configuration settings.
A laptop used for configuration will conventionally communicate with the radio equipment using TCP/IP through an network interface using a browser application. A user performing such configuration tasks generally needs to have certain permissions and skills in order to perform such configuration tasks. For example, the user may need administrative access to the laptop and knowledge regarding the current configuration of the laptop. Further, the user needs to have sufficient familiarity with selection of IP addresses, knowledge of sub-nets and so on. Such configuration tasks may be further complicated by a harsh and/or possibly hostile environment.
Antenna alignment is also typically performed using a laptop computer. In particular, the network radio equipment can provide a received signal strength indication (RSSI) to the laptop computer. This value can be periodically updated on the laptop display screen so that the operator can determine an optimal position and orientation for the antenna portion of the network radio equipment.